1. Field
The present embodiments relate to techniques for rendering and displaying text on a computer system. More specifically, the present embodiments relate to techniques for rendering and displaying text using composite bitmap images.
2. Related Art
Despite the increased use of digital media such as images, audio, and video in computer systems, human-computer interactions still rely on text. For example, a user of a computer system may rely on text to identify files and applications, access and read webpages, read and write emails and/or documents, and/or configure settings on the computer system. Consequently, human-computer interaction may be facilitated by improving the readability of text on computer displays such as liquid crystal displays (LCDs), cathode ray tube (CRT) displays, and/or display screens on portable electronic devices.
Modern computer systems typically render and display text by converting the text from an internal representation into a bitmap description. Such conversion may allow the text to be scaled to an arbitrary size prior to displaying the text on a display screen. In addition, readability and/or rendering accuracy across different display types and resolutions may be enhanced by applying advanced text rendering techniques such as anti-aliasing, hinting, and/or sub-pixel rendering to the bitmap description.
However, text rendered using advanced text rendering techniques may require additional computation, resulting in a tradeoff between rendering accuracy and rendering efficiency. Reduced efficiency from increased rendering accuracy may further affect the usability of computer systems with limited computational resources. For example, a portable electronic device with limited processor resources may hang and/or become unresponsive during sub-pixel rendering of text. Similarly, a web browser that displays remotely rendered text in a webpage may experience increased latency during re-rendering of the text (e.g., from resizing of the webpage).
Hence, what is needed is a mechanism for reducing computational costs associated with rendering and displaying text in computing systems.